Following the takeover by financial investors, the real estate financier Aareal Bank will also have a new Chief Financial Officer.

Marc Hess will leave the company at the end of the year, when his contract expires, the Wiesbaden-based company announced on Wednesday. A decision on his successor will be made soon. Jochen Klösges will leave Aareal Bank at the end of July, to be succeeded by Christian Ricken, previously a member of LBBW's Management Board. Last year, the financial investors Advent and Centerbridge as well as the Canadian pension fund CPPIB took over the bank.

Aareal Bank, which specializes in financing commercial properties as well as software products for the sector, increased its operating profit by 66 per cent to EUR 103 million, the highest level since 2018. Due to the ongoing property crisis, risk provisions for non-performing loans of EUR 83 million were significantly higher than the previous year's EUR 32 million. The bank has further reduced its portfolio of problematic loans for US office properties. At the end of March, the total portfolio of non-performing loans amounted to 1.1 billion euros, compared to 1.6 billion euros at the end of December.

(Report by Sabine Wollrab, edited by Myria Mildenberger. If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)